Waltz Wogging

There’s a good reason why most my songs on iTunes that employ 3/4 time do not make satisfactory walking or jogging songs: they’re either too slow or too fast. If a waltz-time number clocks in at 65 bars per minute, your only options are to crawl at 65 beats per minute or run like a maniac at 195 beats per minute. Thus a waltz has to have either fewer than 60 bars per minutes or more than 79 bars per minute to qualify as walkable, joggable, or runable.

Nonetheless, some waltzes do qualify. Here’s a few 3/4-timers that haven’t made into a set list on Podwogging.com. First some fast numbers:

1. Red Hot Chili Peppers—Breaking the Girl, 180 BPM
2. Donovan—Catch the Wind, 177 BPM
3. Traffic—Rainmaker, 166 BPM
4. Tori Amos—Barons of Suburbia, 163 BPM
5. John Lennon—Working Class Hero, 154 BPM

Now for a few slower ones:

6. Leonard Cohen—Sisters of Mercy, 138 BPM
7. Cat Stevens—Morning Has Broken, 131 BPM
8. Fields—School books, 128 BPM
9. Neil Young—Round and Round (It Won’t Be Long), 123 BPM
10. Dionne Warwick—What the World Needs Now Is Love, 108 BPM